Palos Verdes

Day 13 / Palos Verdes

          This narrative is not really something that will help you if you decide to go traveling, it is more of a reminiscence for me as I spent two great years here in 1963/64 when I was in 3^rd and 4^th grade.

          And I still think about it all the time.

          Paula was a trooper as she followed me around the Peninsula yesterday. We drove all over and even though I tried to explain where we were and what I did there, so much more was locked up in my head that I didn’t say.

          Who cares if that house is where Tommy Daniels lived, or that’s where my old school bus stop was?

          So, I did my best to show the highlights of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and not overly expound on its virtues because  unless you’ve lived here, there is absolutely no way to describe it.

          Palos Verdes is a Peninsula on the California coast just outside of Los Angeles. Not only is it a peninsula, but it rises to about 1500 ft. and everything else around it, including L.A. is basically at sea level. This means that from the very top of the peninsula, where my grammar school and the playground were located, I could look out across the Greater Los Angeles area all the way to the San Bernadino and San Gabriel Mountains and all the way up the coast to Santa Barbara.

          My bus ride to school was maybe one of the best in the world because we went past Marineland of the Pacific (this was way before SeaWorld even existed), up the hill past the active Nike Missile Base, and all the way along I could see across the Catalina Channel to the Island that holds the same name.

          Catalina Island (Yes, that one, “Twenty-six miles across the sea, Catalina Island is awaitin’ for me,”) haunted me for those two years that we lived there.

          We never visited it.

          We went lots of other places in Southern California, Sequoia, Lake Arrowhead, the Salton Sea, and uncountable weekend days at the local beaches, but we never went to Catalina.

          So every day I stared that twenty-six miles across the sea at that mysterious Island that haunted me in a way that only a nine-year old can be haunted. It took another thirty-four years for me to get there. That was on a family vacation that we took combining it with a wedding in Lake Tahoe.

          We are going there for a full day tomorrow and that should make a really nice post! We leave on the 6 AM jet-boat to Avalon Harbor and don’t return until almost 9 PM. Blog Post to follow (If I get up in time)!

          Back to Palos Verdes.

          Lots of things have changed since I lived there. Many more homes, the Japanese farms have disappeared (that’s where the homes are) and some of the areas that I hiked in as a kid are now nature preserves complete with hiking trails. There are four different political entities on the Peninsula, but they all seem to have each other in mind.  They collectively keep the whole peninsula cohesive when it comes to planning and executing public places and they even have a coalition of Conservators that help keep these public trails and ocean-side areas  maintained.

          We hiked down the cliffs to get to the beach where the tide pools are. It’s not the same as back then, the sea urchins are gone, as are the abalone, both victims of our modern (read environmentally stressed) times. We did see some anemones!😊 We were there at low tide and were able to scramble out on the rocks a bit. The water is still clear, but way too cold to try and go in.

          We stopped at the Wayfarer’s Chapel, an all-glass chapel built in 1949 and was designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, and you can see all of the Wright-inspired styles in it. What a setting!

          This place, as close as it is to Los Angeles, is about as far away (in all ways that you can imagine) from it as it can possibly be.

          I take back what I said in the beginning. This would be a great place to visit and spend some time. There is a world-renowned spa and hotel here and more outdoor activities than you can imagine. All in encased in the Mediterranean -type climate that helps make Palos Verdes so nice a place to be at.

          It truly is in a world of its own.